"I! how?"
"Do I know how? You come here—you commence by offending me."
"Offend you?"
"Yes: you ask who wants your bread: I answer first 'I.' Mont Saint
Jean only asks for it afterward and you give her the preference.
Furious at this, I rush on you with my knife raised."
"And I said to you, 'Kill me if you will, but do not make me suffer too much,'" answered La Goualeuse; "that was all."
"That was all! Yes, that was all! and yet, these words alone caused the knife to fall from my hands; made me ask pardon from you, who had offended me. Is it natural? Why, when I return to my senses, I pity myself. And the night when you arrived here, when you knelt to say your prayers, why, instead of laughing at you and arousing the whole company—why was it that I said, 'Leave her alone; she prays because she has the right to do so.' And, the next morning, why were we all ashamed to dress before you?"
"I do not know, La Louve."
"Really!" said this violent creature, with irony, "you don't know! It is, doubtless, as we have told you sometimes in jest, that you are of another family than ours. Perhaps you believe that?"
"I never said so."
"You never said so, but you act so."